Google Hires Java Founder James Gosling

In his next act, Java founder James Gosling has joined Google, although exactly what he'll be doing there remains a mystery.

Java founder James Gosling has been snatched up by Google.
"Through some odd twists in the road over the past year, and a tardis encountered along the way, I find myself starting employment at Google today," Gosling wrote in a March 28 posting on his blog. "I find it odd that this time I'm taking the road more travelled by, but it looks like interesting fun with huge leverage."

"Tardis" is a reference to the time machine in the British television show Doctor Who, which is disguised as a vintage London telephone box.

As to Gosling's actual role within the Googleplex, that remains unclear. "I don't know what I'll be working on," he wrote. "I expect it'll be a bit of everything, seasoned with a large dose of grumpy curmudgeon."

Gosling helped birth Java in the early 1990s, and became a vocal ambassador for the platform in the years that followed. Sun Microsystems began deploying the technology in 1995. When Oracle finalized its $7.4 billion Sun acquisition in 2010, Gosling stayed aboard the new company--until extenuating circumstances led him to jump overboard.

"There is actually a long list of things that played into my leaving Oracle," Gosling told eWEEK in an exclusive interview in September 2010. "There were things like my salary offer. After getting my offer from them I tried to figure out what my compensation would be like on my W-2 form that it was a major hit. They copied my base salary [from Sun]." That apparently excluded any bonuses accrued during a typical year at Sun.

In addition to what he perceived as a pay cut, Gosling also felt that Oracle minimized his ability to make decisions: "Oracle is an extremely micromanaged company. So myself and my peers in the Java area were not allowed to decide anything. All of our authority to decide anything evaporated."